Homemade Lego Gifts

Here’s a Creative Solution for Lego-lovers; a crafty, homemade gift that is useful, fun, inexpensive, and pretty easy.

Assuming you have acrylic paints on hand, this Lego tray cost about $11 to make (even less if you can snag a baseplate from your kids’ playroom).

The wooden trays are available at any craft store. I got mine from Hobby Lobby ($7.99, minus a 40% off coupon). Just be sure to get the large tray (10 3/4 ” x 14″) so that it will fit the 10 inch Lego baseplate. The baseplates are available at Target, the Lego Store, or Amazon for $4.99.

Paint the tray one color (avoid green since that’ll be the baseplate color). Let it dry, then paint bricks around the outside border–a rectangle with dots on top.

I like to finish any painting-on-wood project with some varnish or polyurethane. This varnish is easy to work with, clean up, and dries super fast. And it can be found in the paints aisle of the craft store. Amazon has it for $10.99, but I’m pretty sure craft stores sell it for closer to $4.99.

After it’s dry, hot glue the baseplate to the side of the tray. Resist the temptation to center it. The “loose” Lego bricks need space to go on the side.

Another easy homemade Lego gift is a Mini-Fig Hat.

You can purchase a white hat from a craft store and dye it yellow… but honestly that’s too many steps for me. The colors of baseball caps in craft stores and dollar stores vary… and I haven’t found a yellow hat in either place years. But lo and behold, Academy Sports has one! Marked $4.99, but rang up at $2.99!

I have a lot of Acrylic paints and find it easier to simply use a fabric medium like this one from Amazon. The instructions on the bottle suggest 2-parts paint to 1-part fabric medium. Although you may want to sketch out your ovals in pencil before beginning, I just threw caution to the wind and had at it. Since it’s a hat that will likely not be washed, I didn’t bother heat setting.